SSD help gaming?

[steelbom]

Hey, I'm going to buy two Intel X25-M G2's, going to install 1 for Windows 7, probably the 160GB one.

How exactly would it improve gaming? obviously they'd start up faster, but what exactly is it that makes them really good?

Kind Regards

 

[Captain Zero]

SSD's are best suited for system drives. That is, the drive your OS runs off of. If you're getting two, get 2x 6GB drives and RAID-0 them, it will be blindingly fast. Use old-school drives for games and storage and they will still benefit from the OS being on SSD's.

EDIT: That should say 2x 64BG drives - not 2x 2GB drive.

 

[steelbom]

2 6GB??? I'd rather just get a 160GB, the Intel ones are pretty good from what I've read. I don't want a raid setup atm.

The second drive is for my mac OSX, but I'll get that one later.

Kind Regards

 

[Captain Zero]

Correction.

And yes, the Intel X-25's are the best on the block - for now.

 

[steelbom]

Ah I see, thanks.

I'm on a Mac, so I can't have a raid setup without a raid card. Unless the raid setup is on OSX, and tied to my mobo or something like that.

I'm looking at a 160GB, it seems like they are all out of stock now, and anyone who does have them in stock, has doubled the price, like NewEgg did pff.

And I've heard a 320GB might be coming, I'd like to get my hands on that for OSX.

When can I buy Windows 7? I'd hate to get the SSD then re-install Win 7 on it, and again later when I buy Windows 7 when it's released.

EDIT: Does anyone know of a fair price for a G2 Intel X25-M 160GB? NewEgg did have them at $449, which suits me very much so!

 

[Captain Zero]

That's a boatload of cash for such a small drive. You can get 2x equally decent performers for a fraction of the price. For an OS, 320GB is overkill. Even 2x 32GB on RAID-0 is more than enough for the average user. Obviously, this presumes that you will use other drives for data, movies, games, etc.

Windows 7 will be available October 22, 2009.

 

[steelbom]

Ah thanks, and yeah it's expensive but well worth it imo.

I've used 180GB on my OSX hard drive, from Final Cut Studio, CS4, XCode, 60GB for 2 Parallels Virtual Machines (XP and Vista)...

So I do need a fair bit, I could get away with 160GB for OSX, but it's not very "future proof" if you know what I mean. The 320GB will assure that I have enough space for the future. and it's not that much more expensive than double the 160 from what I've looked at, although it's early days now.

For Windows 7, I've already used 50GB of my 150GB Partition, 160GB would leave me 110GB for future games, 80GB would only leave me 30GB.

 

[Captain Zero]

The best use for SSD (either RAID or solo) is for a pure OS. I'm not sure about OSX, but for Win7, 32GB is enough for most users, 64GB is 'future proof' but that's still a LOT of software. I keep my OS drives pure, that is, I only install the OS and programs that I want to run. No pagefile, hiberfile, and even /My Documents is kept on seperate physical drives.

For cheap data storage, you can run a WD-Caviar 1TB drive for very little money and it's more than enough to run games on and used as general storage.

 

[steelbom]

Yeah, I'd rather have it all on my SSD though, I only use Windows 7 for gaming, but I want this SSD to last the next few years if necessary.

True if you do what you said it'd work with a very small SSD, but I'd rather keep all my games on the SSD for the performance boost, I don't really have other files I download on Windows 7. I mainly use OSX for work, and I can boot up Windows 7 through Parallels on OSX.

I'd like to see 6x320GB Intel X25M G2 SSDs in raid 0, imagine the speed gains? it would be amazing :O

 

[Captain Zero]

It would be a pretty quick setup but, at those speeds, you run into bottlenecks and the benefits are lost. For now, dual or even quad RAIDs are suffecient unless you run dedicated RAID cards.

That setup, for reasons you mentioned, would work fine. Seems like more money than sense though..

 

[Lanthus20]

2 6GB??? I'd rather just get a 160GB, the Intel ones are pretty good from what I've read. I don't want a raid setup atm.

The second drive is for my mac OSX, but I'll get that one later.

Kind Regards

i'd get about 20gb if thats possible, install seven on that and then do what he said. He means if you have just enough to install seven it will be cheaper, but will still benefit. SSD's are quite expensive right now.

 

[steelbom]

Yeah I know, I'd rather get the bigger one though.

It's a shame I don't think I can even do a Raid Setup with the Mac Raid Card in Windows.. only in OSX :O